


Miles To Go, Etc.

by Kryptontease



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Episode: s03e01 They're Back Aren't They?, F/M, Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 03, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Wing Reveal, canon-typical feelings about wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25231243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptontease/pseuds/Kryptontease
Summary: After waking up in the desert, Lucifer struggles to come to terms with his wings. A season 3 canon divergence fic.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 12
Kudos: 131
Collections: Wingfic Exchange June 2020





	Miles To Go, Etc.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Corina (CorinaLannister)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorinaLannister/gifts).



> This fic was written for the 2020 Wingfic Flash Exchange.

The heat stung Lucifer’s skin and parched him to the bone. Hours ago, he had awoken in the high desert, no shirt, no shoes and certainly no service. Someone had knocked him out and tossed him into one of those wilderness basin areas outside of Los Angeles. Short scrubby trees dotted the landscape as far as he could see. He couldn’t tell how far from the city he had been dumped. Daniel Espinoza had wittered on about several of them and their _natural beauty_ months ago when he was looking for family activities with the spawn--but as far as Lucifer was concerned, all deserts were basically the same: hot, dry, and never a bottle of bourbon when you needed one. 

The wings were an insult to injury. 

Lucifer brooded on the subject for the full ten hours it took for him to trudge to the nearest outpost of civilization. During that time, he had come to three conclusions. 

One, it was lunacy that no car had driven down the service road that he was following back to civilization. 

He had followed it from the Joshua Tree Crossing to the outskirts of one of those little desolate towns with the name of Eagle or Desert of Dale without a single encounter with a car. If a motorist had deigned to pass him, he could have been back in LA at a reasonable hour--to keep his word with the Detective, to finally come clean with her about his identity. 

Two, it was unfair that even without the Detective's presence, he was still suffering. 

He was intimately familiar with the fiery volcanic plane that ringed the frozen basalt columns of Hell’s highest security cells. The desert was hot, yes, but it was a dry salt heat; not the netherworld churning up eons of human torment in the form of volcanic lava. He should be able to handle it. He hadn't been gone from Hell _that_ long, had he?

Three, the wings were someone's idea of a bad joke. 

Lucifer had burned his wings on the beach in front of Amenadiel--his fuck-you to his brother, his dad, and any other bastard who pressured him to accept the destiny that had been forced on him--and now the wings on his back seemed to burn him. In the shimmering summer heat, sparks rose off of him and danced in the sweltering afternoon sun. They nipped at his bare chest and burned him where they touched him. He was bloody well sure that the sparks were motes of angelic power. 

He just knew it. 

So when he finally stumbled that last mile into the Last Stop Motel & Bar, he was ready to throw down with anyone who so much as commented on his sorry state. A barfly who was making friends with the Last Stop dumpster sneered at him. He changed his tone right quick when Lucifer flexed his wings with all of the fury of Hell.

The white glowing _Heavenliness_ undermined all of his righteous fury. Typical. 

“A-are you here for me?” the barfly stammered. He shrank against the bar’s back wall as Lucifer’s shadow eclipsed the setting sun.

“ _Absolutely not_. I’m Lucifer Morningstar, not pleased to make your acquaintance. Now tell me--” Lucifer cast a critical eye over the bleached signs of a sandblasted, and abandoned strip mall-- “where can one find a car in the town that time forgot?” 

Even parched and blistered, his charm secured him passage back to Los Angeles, and a charitable motorist’s spare Hawaiian shirt. He didn’t even bother stopping at the Penthouse; he marched right into the precinct. Chloe was at her desk, filing out the last of the day’s paperwork. 

“Lucifer!” she exclaimed, her eyes shining with concern. Right. Good. He could work with concern. “What the _hell_ happened to you?”

He tried to explain. The call. His promise. The attack in the hospital parking lot. Waking up in the desert. (He left out the part about how he’d woken up with his wings restored to their full angelic glory.) His suspicion that his father was behind the kidnapping. 

When it became clear that he was in no immediate danger beyond the discomfort of a full-body heat rash, Chloe’s expression cooled. The story sounded far-fetched, even to him. 

“What you’re reporting is a _crime,_ Lucifer,” Chloe stated. “If you’re wasting the department’s time, because you felt a little too Lucifer-y after the call last night--”

Lucifer was taken aback. “I’m not lying, Detective. I can _take_ you there right now. Or...at least the general vicinity. Within the nearest quarter mile. Or, better yet--” He put his hand on her elbow and gently steered her away from her desk. 

“Tomorrow, Lucifer. It’s been a long day.” 

“Tonight, Detective. Right now.” 

He maneuvered Chloe into Ms. Lopez’s lab, empty at the late hour. He closed the blinds. 

“What you might see will be shocking, but...try to keep an open mind?” Lucifer cleared his throat.

Lucifer reached for his Devil Face, to show her what he truly was--and felt _nothing_. That inner fire that churned up his guilt and self-loathing was utterly silent. 

“I just keep caring, and you just--” Chloe bit back a hiccup. “Serves me right to think that you could just be straight with me for once.” 

“Detective, I _am_ being straight with you. My face is _terrifying_. Literally. It strikes fear into the hearts of even the lowliest miscreant! It’s just not…working.” He smashed his cheeks and pinched the skin on his forehead. _Where is it_ , he muttered.

She laughed bitterly, mostly at herself. 

“It’s my fault, really. I get my expectations up that maybe _this time_ , you’ll drop the act and we’ll have a serious conversation. Lucifer, please take care of yourself, okay? Get yourself checked out. You’re probably delirious from the heat.”

That was that. The barrier of professional politeness had sprung up. He had no counterattack for this defense. And like that, Chloe was gone; she’d grabbed the keys from her desk and disappeared into the stairwell to the parking garage. 

He had lost his chance with Chloe. 

He never even thought to show her his wings. Those weren’t _him_. Why parade around his punishment in front of her?

Later, in the shower, he removed the nuisances and left them in a pile in his walk-in closet. By morning, they’d sprung fully-formed out of the stumps on his back. The white feathers glowed in the dim morning light like they had when they were first formed by God himself--when they still held the promise of a father’s undying love.

Typical of dear old dad. 

Making him relieve the worst moment of his life over and over again.

~ + ~

He burned the first set of wings on the beach for nostalgia’s sake. And the second set too. 

By the third, he’d felt the hollowness of his defiance. He redoubled his efforts with Maze’s hell-forged demon blade, but he didn’t bother to dispose of set number three or four or five. The discarded wings accumulated in the back of a closet he only used when he entertained guests.

Because, so help him, he hadn’t been able to enjoy _those_ lately either--not since the wings had popped out during sex and his partner had breathlessly exclaimed that God had sent her a guardian angel. 

Ruined the whole mood. 

And it had, quite honestly, put him off cutting the things off, too. 

If he abstained from sex, vigorous exercise, or conversations of longer than three minutes with Amenadiel, he could shift his wings into the ethereal plane, and pretend they didn’t exist. 

He didn’t even question when the pile of wings disappeared from the guest closet. The ways of God were ineffable, after all. But it did cheer him up all the same. 

Out of sight, out of mind. 

~ + ~

The new lieutenant, Lucifer decided, was a bit of an asshole. 

Lieutenant Pierce pushed Chloe harder and harder on each case and found more excuses to block Lucifer from ongoing investigations. Lucifer wasn’t attuned to the nuances of how cases were assigned in the precinct, but even he got the distinct impression that the lieutenant was putting Chloe through the paces, to prove herself to the new brass.

 _It’s like Palmetto all over again_ , Chloe groused when they caught their third case that week. They hadn’t even fully resolved the kidnap-your-local-Devil case, or the withered body in the desert that they’d found mere yards away from where Lucifer had been dumped. Nevertheless, the lieutenant insisted that they work all cases that were assigned to them, and to give their full attention to the body that they had just recovered from Laurel Canyon. 

Lucifer perhaps didn’t understand the Detective’s full feelings on the matter, but he understood what it meant to be _tested_ and he resolved to be indispensable for as long as her trials endured. He doled out some of his best defenestration jokes when it became apparent that the body wasn’t a _suicide_ , but the forty-two year old man had fallen from a great height. When the case took a turn for the _sordid_ , and even Lieutenant Pierce’s meddling couldn’t shut him out, Lucifer secured an plus-one invite to the Hollywood Hill’s most exclusive party destination at the mansion that stood at the top of the ravine. 

It was a masked-ball-turned-sex-party. He’d offered to open his closet to the Detective while they swapped information with Ella in the lab, but the Detective had demurred.

“I can find my own costume, Lucifer.”

“A hint, at least, Detective? So we can match,” he purred. 

“Well, you’ve worked with detectives for a year now.” Chloe clapped him on his shoulder. “Why don’t you figure it out?”

“At least allow me to escort you to the party,” Lucifer pressed. 

“We’ll meet there at 7pm,” Chloe insisted. 

“Don’t be so gauche, Detective. Sex parties rarely heat up before 10.” 

“Ella, could you drop these results on my desk when you’re done?” Chloe side-eyed Lucifer, who preened under her attention. “I will meet _you_ tonight at 10pm.” 

As soon as the Detective had returned to her desk, Lucifer fixed his gaze on Ella, who threw up her hands in immediate surrender.

“You know I’m ride or die for party symmetry, but you’re going to have to do your own reconnaissance for this one, buddy.”

Lucifer cracked open the blinds and squinted at the Detective through them. Lieutenant Pierce hovered around her desk; they shared a joke, and Chloe laughed--one of her genuine, full-body laughs. Lieutenant Pierce leaned into Chloe and cupped her elbow with his hand. An uncomfortable emotion bubbled under his skin. A telltale itch bloomed under his shoulder blades; a light burn that rose to a scream.

“Excuse me, Ms. Lopez, I have a--thing!” 

A blast of wind knocked several open folders to the floor. Ella’s head snapped up from her microscope as she grabbed for a stack of papers that teetered on the edge of her workbench.

“Lucifer?” Ella called out, but the room was already empty. 

In the stairwell, Lucifer’s wings unfurled to their full breadth. No, no, _no_. Not here. Not now. He tried to move them back into ethereal space, but they popped out again when his mind replayed the intimate moment between Lieutenant Pierce and the Detective at her desk. A new and unpleasant feeling lodged in his chest, and he struggled to think about anything else--the numblerless crimes, the churning fire, the restless crowds of Hell--anything to stop the sick, shaky feeling that had wormed its way into his heart. 

The door to the stairwell swung open, and Lucifer used the pull of his wings to propel himself through the ethereal plane and out onto the precinct roof. 

“Will you _bloody_ disappear!” he roared. He beat his wings wildly and then sunk to his knees. 

His wings settled onto his back. The feathers just _lay there,_ placid and uncaring. 

“Can you just _behave_ for one. more. night?!” 

He took a shuddering breath and reached towards the ethereal plane one more time. His wings popped out of existence. 

“Thank you,” he said pointedly, to any celestial busybodies that might have been eavesdropping.

He had bought himself an evening’s reprieve, but he knew dealing with what his father had done to him could no longer be indefinitely postponed.

~ + ~

Lucifer stood in front of his closet for an hour, pulling out outfits and discarding them. He decided on a white dress shirt, a dark green wool suit and waistcoat, and a dark cravat that came up around his throat in a spray of black-and-green chiffon--finished with a burgundy pocket square. He plucked a pair of toy handcuffs off of the Discard Pile, and shoved the rest of the heap of bondage gear and period costumes back into the closet. He had promised to help the Detective, and he was going to show her just how valuable he could be when they were investigating in his wheelhouse.

When he pulled up to the Garden View Drive mansion in his black corvette, the party was in full swing. Guests flowed out of the mansion onto the checkerboard courtyard, clad in bright jewel tones and Carnival masks. He lingered near the driveway. The house was a rather classy addition to the hillside, done up in Desert Modernism or whatever they were calling turn-of-the-century glass houses in the architectural trades.

Someone swatted his shoulder, and he turned on his heels to _beg their pardon_ , but he stopped short when he saw the Detective.

She was wearing a heavy beige trench coat that was loosely belted around her, with the suggestion that whatever she was wearing underneath was _not_ her usual leather coat & blouse combo. She held two full face masks. 

“Lucifer! You were supposed to come in costume,” Chloe whispered.

“I did! The Devil You Know, at your service.” Lucifer mock-curtsied. 

Chloe opened and closed her mouth, seeming to think better of what she was about to say. She did, however, grant him a genuine smile and relaxed enough to not send out flashing I’M A COP signs to all and sundry. He knew undercover work was stressful for the Detective, but really, what was this evening but a bit of standard fun, with a side bonus of sexy interrogations? He shared this insight with her. She scoffed and rolled her eyes; nevertheless, he could feel her last bit of reserve melt and he preened inwardly. He had missed their easy camaraderie from before the trip to the desert. 

“Let’s get this done,” she said quickly, handing one of the masks to Lucifer. It was gold and black with a dark ruffle of fabric that would fully obscure his face. 

“I think first, you should lose the coat? Unless you’ve come dressed as Columbo.” 

She looked up at him, and then down at her coat. “No comments once we’re in the house, that’s the deal,” she said. “I’ll give you a minute for you to get it all out now.”

She untied the belt, and slipped the trench coat off. 

Lucifer just stared.

Chloe wore a gown-length peacock blue chiffon dress that lightened into a stunning aventurine green where the skirt dusted the floor. A delicate art nouveau caplet of pearls and thin golden chains covered her from shoulders to throat and then dangled down to a gold sash that belted her dress across the waist. Peacock feather eyes had been sewn into the cascading hem. Chloe shimmered in her iridescent armor. Two small peacock feather wings made of chiffon and gold lame adorned her back. His eyes locked onto her fake wings and he felt a powerful surge of emotions.

Which ones they were, he’d have to parse that out later with Linda. He found her absolutely stunning, but a strange current of longing and loss seemed to dog him when he stared at those small wings. That she could _choose_ them, and remove them at will. It filled him with such an exquisite and profound sadness. 

“Did I just render Lucifer Morningstar _speechless_?” Chloe mugged for an invisible camera, as though she’d just won a prestigious award. 

Lucifer blinked through his momentary lapse of wit. “Well done, Detective,” he mumbled. 

Chloe fitted her own half-mask with matching peacock feathers at its crown, and Lucifer followed her lead a moment later with his.

He offered her his arm. “Shall we mingle?” 

“Remember, we’re looking for either owner of the house. They should know more about our vic.” 

“Of course. Duty calls.” 

Lucifer escorted Chloe into the mansion. They were quickly separated in the crowd of jewel-hued revelers, but he had no doubt the Detective could hold her own. He brought his power to the front and began to slip through the party, eliciting desires, and hunting for pieces of this puzzle that didn’t fit. 

~ + ~

They had been combing the party for two hours when a clap of thunder dampened the conviviality. Lucifer had seen Chloe thread through his peripheral vision every half hour, and his eyes lingered on the peacock train that trailed in her wake. He had discovered absolutely nothing relevant to the case, but he had inspired at least two revelers to run up the glass stairs and disappear into a side room. 

“For a sex party, I was expecting more general randiness,” Lucifer opined to a woman with a fox half-mask leaning against a wet bar. “It seems like the only difference between here and a night at Lux is that some people arrived topless.”

“I’m sorry the night has been such a letdown--” she pouted as she slipped a manicured hand into his waistcoat. “why don’t I make it up to you?” 

“Wonderful!” Lucifer brightened. He grabbed a tumbler from the bar and poured himself some top-shelf scotch. “Our current thinking is that there’s a serial killer at the party. Has anyone seemed suspicious to you? Either generally creepy, or in a murder-stalker-killer way?”

The fox reared back, and withdrew her hand like it had been burned. She muttered that this was just her luck, and made a swift exit into the crowd.

“I’ll take that as a no!” Lucifer called after her. 

Another clap of thunder rumbled through the house, and the sky opened up. Shouts of displeasure rippled through revelers who had been caught out in the rain. They squealed as they shoved their way through the crowd. There were no overhanging roofs or alcoves outside to hide from the sudden downpour. It was pandemonium as a hundred people tried to squeeze through a sliding glass door that would admit two people at most.

Lucifer threw back the rest of his scotch. “This is why modernism should have never abandoned the veranda.” 

Suddenly, movement caught his eye. At the edge of the property, where a low glass wall separated the patio from the sudden plunge into Laurel Canyon. Two figures struggled with each other. A lightning bolt arced through the sky and lit up the figures for one brief moment.

Chloe and a woman in her late 50s were struggling for a small bladed weapon, a stiletto or a switchblade. And then were swallowed by darkness.

Lucifer pushed through the crowd toward the patio, but the mass of people trying to stream into the house only carried him further way.

“OUT OF MY WAY,” he commanded.

No one listened. He could barely see the detective between the sheets of rain. Lightning flashed again, and he saw a figure stumble in the dark, teetering against the edge of the cliff.

The _hell_ with this. 

He reached towards the ethereal plane, and in an instant, he was outside and running.

He was nearly there. He could see the two combatants clearly now. Chloe had the older woman in a defensive position. She smashed the assailant’s hand against her knee, and disarmed her. The knife slipped out of view over the slide of the cliff. 

The assailant used a moment’s distraction and she body-checked Chloe. Chloe stumbled through the small glass barrier and shattered it. The wall didn’t even break her momentum. One sickening moment, Chloe was in view, her eyes wide with fear. And the next, she followed the knife over the side of the cliff. 

“DETECTIVE,” Lucifer screamed.

Lucifer didn’t even have to think. His wings snapped wide, he took a running start and he dove off the cliff after her.

~ + ~

Rain battered his wings as he dove through the darkness. The water stung as it hit his wings, which were not accustomed to terrestrial weather. The last time he had flown into battle, Hell’s volcanic ash had coated his wings like a soothing blanket. He could almost hear the maddening roll of drums, the beat of Hell’s armies, in the pulse of rain against his skin. No. He still had time.

He dodged blindly around an outcropping rock, and spotted Chloe falling through space like a rag doll. Less than a second had passed. He _could_ make it. 

He reached into ethereal space once again, and pulled his body forward. It was a gamble. He could overshoot. He could materialize dangerously close to Chloe. A hundred things could go wrong, but he couldn’t care about that now. He blinked back into reality alongside Chloe. 

Her face wasn’t turned to him. She had no idea what was coming. So when he grabbed her waist, she screamed at full force. He pulled her to his chest, and then arced through the rain as he slowed their dizzying fall into a gentle, gliding descent.

The ground came up at him quicker than expected. He just barely avoided impact by stumbling against the wet rocks, and then rolling them both into a patch of sage scrub that grew like weeds in the canyon. Chloe landed on top of him. She shivered against him as she took giant, gulping breaths. 

He tried to roll them both up into sitting position, but when he tried to movie, he felt an angry fire crawl through his shoulder blades. His wings had taken the brunt of their impact.

Chloe stared at him, hard, her streaked hair plastered against the side of her head in the rain. Lucifer brushed a stray lock away from her face and cupped her chin. Despite himself, his hand trembled. 

_She’s alive_ , _she’s alive, she’s alive,_ his heart sang. _Whatever she says to me, she’s alive_. 

Her eyes raked over his wings, and then back to his face, and then to his wings again, as though she were trying to decide whether or not this was real.

“Say something." His voice was barely a whisper, but the request was plaintive all the same. 

Chloe squeezed her eyes closed, and then fell against him. It was the best they could do, given the circumstances. He held her tightly against his chest as the rain pelted them and kissed her softly. 

“Thank you, Lucifer,” Chloe whispered back.

It was more than enough. More than he could have hoped for.

“The pleasure was all mine, I’m sure,” Lucifer said roughly, punctuating the sentence with a rattling cough. He tried to shift a wing to cover them. They laid together like that, shaking in the rain, as the storm intensified around them. A gale howled through the canyon, drowning out the sound of their heartbeats. 

“This might seem like an odd request, given our intimate configuration--but would you mind walking half a mile down the road and returning in twenty minutes? I promise if you do that, I won’t ruin the mood again tonight.”

That earned him a mock-punched in the shoulder. A jolt of pain shot through his wing. The right one was probably broken. 

Chloe slicked her hair back. Rivulets ran down her face and soaked through her dress. “If I leave right now, no questions asked, I expect full disclosure when I return.” 

“Devil’s honor,” Lucifer promised solemnly. 

~ + ~

Chloe disappeared around the bend in the canyon. She had headed down the canyon road. Neither she nor Lucifer were familiar with this part of the Hollywood Hills, but it was a good bet that _down_ would take her towards the city. 

He could roughly gauge her progress by the lessening pain. When she hit 400 yards, the burning pain in his shoulder began to fade. When she passed the quarter-mile mark, the bones in his wings knit back together. His body wouldn’t heal quite that fast, but his wings still drew most of their energy from the ethereal plane. They couldn’t become quite as human as the rest of him. 

He stood up, and flexed his wings carefully in the downpour. 

The drops had stopped feeling like hot daggers against his feathers, but the experience still wasn’t comfortable. He felt a small longing for the penetrating heat of Hell, or even the salt flats he’d trudged through just a month ago.

He tipped his head up to the sky, and waited for the thunder to roll.

A bolt of lightning crashed overhead.

Lucifer flashed his wings out in full defiance of the storm. 

“Dad, I know you’re listening. I know you _did_ this to me, and I will never thank you for that… But I will appreciate that you gave me the means to save Chloe tonight. So congratulations, you’re maybe one percent less of an asshole than I thought you were.”

The thunder echoed off the hills and rumbled into the distance.

“I thought you’d say that,” Lucifer groused. He felt an uneasy peace inside of him. Maybe he’d never feel like the wings were his, but--they weren’t the curse that he thought they were. Maybe that was enough for now. 

He tested his wings. The pain washed from them as though it was melting into the rain and with a few strong beats, he began to rise under his own power. He took to the sky. On the horizon, lightning danced over Los Angeles, throwing heavenly sparks between the titanic drifts of steel and glass of an unquiet city. 

“Yeah, well. Don’t expect a postcard at Christmas,” he rejoined--and with a snap of his wings he set off to find Chloe. 

The red and white lights of the freeways bled into the sky. He didn’t linger to watch how the rain swept the world into an otherworldly rift, softer and gentler than the sun-drenched city he knew and loved. The Detective was already ahead of him, and he had promises to keep.


End file.
